Realism in Science: Common GroundRobert Bennett

robert.bennett@rcn.com

Abstract: Philosophy is the basis of all sciences, the foundation of knowledge thatprovides ultimate answers beyond the limits of science. Although scorned andspurned by science purists(which is partially justified by its modern errant ver-sions), metaphysics and logic, especially, form a common ground of agreement andthe tools for truth validation that is so obviously missing in theoretical analysis. Wewill propose a set of premises for use as a common world-view and then applythem to current science beliefs in order to demonstrate some common fallacies thatcommonly occur in establishment public beliefs and rational thinking. The intent isto build a solid common ground of tools and axioms based on philosophical realismand the scientific method for knowledge development by researchers.

1. Introduction

Philosophy is usually ignored, rejected, or despised by mainstream and dissidents alike. Estab-lishment science mocks philosophy in its intelllectual arrogance, a fault that reasonable peopleshould be wary of. Misunderstandings and negative attitude based on modern philosophers isunderstandable – from Rousseau’s rationalism to Kant’s idealism and Nietzche’s nihilism. Butthe underlying cause of all the distrust is a lack of understanding of the nature and value of arealistic philosophy in discovering truth – of all types.It would be ideal for all to agree on a repository of philosophical principles, as a source of com-mon-ground beliefs. Thereby we may avoid the common occurrence of dialogues that aredoomed to fail. They start from unspecified definitions and assumptions, and use common logicalfallacies in an attempt to carry a point across, which is based on their personal worldview. It isimperative that all worldviews and assumptions are known and disclosed in seeking scientifictruth – even by those who deny they have any worldview or presumptions.In the future, discussions, debates, and arguments can begin by laying out the fundamentals witha simple question: Do you subscribe to the philosophical standards of realism? If not, advancingfurther is pointless.A situation to avoid is a physics – or any science – discussion or debate where it’s belatedly dis-covered that the issue is not physics, but divergent assumptions on metaphysics that prevents acommon worldview. Does anybody believe in ignoring contradictions? Or that effects can occurwithout causes? Or that reality is subjective?

You might as well be speaking an unknown language to each other. But when you don’t have acommon spoken language to communicate, you know this immediately. Why find out after sev-eral exchanges, or a half-hour discussion, that your correspondent believes contradictions can beignored… or the vacuum in physics means what does not exist - nothing, rather than the absenceof matter?We all have a worldview that began in infancy, when our eyes told us an object was before us,and our hand confirmed its existence by touching, when we released an object and it fell to theground, not to the sky, etc. The question is – do our mature worldviews agree now, after a lifetimeof exploring and discovering, studying and wondering, or do we have our own personal andprivate images of the world, how it works, and why it works. Philosophy can help answer thesequestions, which are fundamental to progress in physics.

In praising science, it does not follow that we must adopt the very poor philosophies which scientific menhave constructed. In philosophy they have much more to learn than to teach. Dean Inge

2. Hierarchy of Knowledge Domains (KD)

Knowledge Domains are the divisions of knowledge by subject and content.A Knowledge Domain collects, processes and produces refined information about its own propersubject matter. As examples:Philosophy has no limits in the material or immaterial worlds but is only limited to exclude reli-gious subjects.Theology also has no limits in its KD but focuses on the divine source.Science is a KD limited to study of the natural world.Physics is a branch of science which studies mainly energy and motion.

Fig. 1. The Hierarchy of Knowledge Domains – from the general to the specific

The breadth and limits of each KD is a fundamental issue to address, as outlined in Fig. 1 above.The complete span of human knowledge includes sources of truth beyond nature – the KD oftheology.Theology is the widest KD, allowing credible human testimony as well as sensory data to pro-duce spiritual/divine knowledge. This is the highest level of KD, which defies Gödel’s theo-rem(discussed later), by supplying knowledge only available to the creator and designer of real-ity, filling in axioms unknown and unproven at human levels of comprehension. It adds divinerevelation to all human knowledge captured by –Philosophy.This KD consists of:

Theology

Philoso-phy

Science

Physics

BiologyChemistry

Divine revelation

Common

experience

Bio-laws

Naturaltesting

Physics

laws

Chem-laws

Life dataEnergy-matter

data

Reaction

data

Lawsof life

Natural laws

Input: Common sense observations from experience and human testimonyProcess: Iterations of observations and rationalizingOutput: Laws or guidelines for living…. A worldview or WeltanschauungPhilosophy, like science, excludes preternatural or supernatural events – only events are pro-cessed that are based on shared human experience. Unlike science, philosophy accepts humantestimony.Science.This KD further limits the scope of knowledge to the natural material world. Science is patentlylimited in its scope which excludes –

single non-repeatable events

extra-natural or supernatural events – only physically measurable events.

events not accessible for equivalent testing in space or time…. the basis of thescientific method(SM).

human testimony

Regarding independence from human testimony: science asserts that all theories must be testa-ble, so individuals can test any claim that the majority propose. But this ideal concept of inde-pendent testing is simplistic and tied to pre-modern science, when lab experiments could bedone by individuals to validate proposed theories. The size, scope and cost of resources to per-form complex modern experiments is a practical prohibition against duplicating tests done bylarge corporations, academic research labs or government institutions.

PhysicsFor physics the process is shown in Fig. 2 and outlined below:Input: Sense data from tests on energy and matter exchangeProcess: Scientific method – iterations of tests and interpretationsOutput : Natural laws or predictions

Fig. 2 Physics KD process

Physics is limited to only natural events and causes - unable to explain the difference between aliving and dead animal, because it admits nothing of spirit, nothing beyond materialism, natu-ralism and scientism….all philosophies which underlie modern physics.Another limit is the need for confirmation by repetition – which excludes singleton events.Strictly and technically speaking, all events are unique, distinguished by time if not by space.The formation of physical laws requires abstraction of certain features, and ignoring others. De-ciding which characteristics are important in experimental testing is part of the subjectivism ofphysics. This weakness is barely acknowledged by mainstream mavens.

Observerdata

Predictions Laws

Physics

Human testimony is another invalid source of physical truth according the scientific method,but the inability of individuals to perform complex and expensive tests forces physics – and allsciences – to accept human testimony – when published in relevant journals, after peer reviewby scientists. The problem is that the process may be poisoned by ideological priorities whichsupersede the self-testing requirement.Despite all the self-imposed limitations in the physics KD scope, and its isolation from otherKD, which produces knowledge blind spots when physicists step outside their own domain,physicists still make the claim that they are approaching a Grand Unified Theory- GUT or aTheory Of Everything - TOE. What chutzpah!There are many other KD sources in science which also tap into natural data sources. And phil-osophical realism, which scientists reject in their ignorance of its benefits – or hubris, allows amuch wider scope of inputs than physics.At one time the metaphysical assumptions of pre-modern science did coincide with realism.They include:

there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists; this world is governed bycausal regularities.

the senses are capable of faithfully representing the world to the mind.

the human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularities.

So, the hierarchy descends from theology to philosophy to science and physics, the lowest of theKDs available to mankind. This hierarchy is subject to a highly emotional condition – the battlebetween those who say there is no higher level than philosophy (or science), because there is noGod…. and the theists.The school of scientism ignores this outline and believes the disciples of physics – the lowest KD- are qualified to pontificate in the domain of philosophy and even theology (e.g., Big Bang).

To see the view of scientism, turn Fig 1 upside down…. and erase theology. This is the invertedpyramid of mainstream physics. …

Physics|

Science|

Philosophy

From the principle of sufficient reason (or causality) no KD can produce more information in itsoutput than it receives as input data. That is, raw information is organized and converted touseful form. This is an example of philosophical reasoning based on the school of realism.

Sufficient Reason axiom: Nothing can give what it doesn’t already have…A cause cannot potentially produce more in the effect than it already has. Proverbially, youcannot get blood from a stone.

3. Brief History of Philosophy

A history of philosophy would best start with the Greeks, where we find many sources.Golden Age of the Greeks

History is Philosophy teaching by examples. -Thucydides

If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.-Socrates

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.All things in moderation. -Aristotle

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and be ignorant. -Hippocrates

Middle Ages - Enlightenment…..saw the rise of scholasticism, a form of moderate realism which revised Aristotle to agree withChristian theology.

The first perfection of being is existence. -AquinasThis is an axiom in ontology, a branch of philosophy which studies being and its properties.

The principle of sufficient reason holds that for everything, there must be sufficient reason why itexists. -AquinasEntities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. –William of Ockham

Ockham’s razor - in judging among competing philosophical or scientific theories, all other thingsbeing equal, we should prefer the simplest theory.

I think therefore I am. –René Descartes…Descartes first doubted everything in order to figure out what he could know with absolutecertainty. Although he could be wrong about what he was thinking, that he was thinking wasundeniable.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?–Bishop George Berkeley

An idealist, Berkeley thought nothing is real but minds and their ideas. Ideas do not exist inde-pendently of minds. He concluded that “to be is to be perceived.” Something exists only if some-one has an idea of it.

We live in the best of all possible worlds. –Gottfried Wilhelm LeibnizThe optimist - before creation God contemplated every possible way the universe could be andchose to create the one in which we live because it’s the best.

The age of the Renaissance included rationalism, the reliance on reason alone, as first espousedby Rousseau. Idealism was associated with Immanuel Kant – the world only exists subjectively,in the mind. So for each mind, a different world.

ModernModern types of philosophy seen in science today include:Scientism – the world can be completely explained by science.Materialism – only matter exists; there is no other immaterial world.Naturalism - only nature exist; denies a spiritual world.Scientific modernism – a blend of materialism and humanismHumanism - one quote captures the humanistic view …. man is the measure of all things.Agnosticism - believes there is truth, but no human way to find it.Nihilism – there is no truth, and no sense in trying to find it.Atheism - there are three types of atheist.

Theoretical: believes there is no God, but lives as though there were.Practical: believes there is a God, but lives as though there were not.True: believes there is no God, and lives as though there were not.

4. Logic

The branch which studies the set of rules for truth discovery and by which one can formulateconvincing arguments. It is "the science of argument." When presenting an argument, one takesa set of premises that are proven to be true, and uses logic to show how they prove a certainconclusion. An important question in logic is what content is provable in a system that uses axi-oms.Gödel’s theorem….proves that all logical axiomatic systems begin with unproven premises that are not provablewithin the logical system. For example, a dictionary requires that to look up a word, you al-ready have to know a minimum set of words… those words could be called the dictionary’smetaphysics, the words assumed to be true and accepted.This theorem means that all human knowledge domains are subject to incomplete sources ofknowledge… except theology, which accepts beliefs based on knowledge revealed from outsidethe human system. This does not violate Gödel’s theorem, since the axioms/beliefs are not partof the KD. Thus, the only complete logical system is theology.We retain the classical scientific method of Bacon – form hypothesis; find experimental evi-dence; validate predictions.The key concepts are testability and logical consistency required throughout.

5. Philosophical quotes1

A common view of philosophy is as simply a set of aphorisms which may be inspirational, hu-morous of just confusing. But philosophy is much more than a gathering of stand-up comediansgiving out one-liners.Here are a few sample quotes on philosophy:

Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.-Richard Feynman

This is the mainstream majority opinion of philosophy… Usually this response is due to igno-rance of realism…or just generic ignorance. In any case, it’s too late to ask Feynman the basisfor his statement.

Scientists are explorers. Philosophers are tourists. -Richard FeynmanRather, realist philosophers are the architects and builders of the knowledge foundation; scien-tists complete the upper floors.

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the di-als seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

-Ludwig WittgensteinSo an incomplete understanding of philosophy accomplishes nothing.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom. -Marcus Tullius CiceroFrom its Greek roots – love of wisdom

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps thechief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it. -Bertrand Russell

A code for survival….

Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. -Martin HeideggerThe pessimistic or gnostic philosopher

Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom. - Will Durant

Yes – facts vs. integration of facts into a coherent worldview that determines lifestyle.

Philosophy: unintelligible answers to insoluble problems. -Henry AdamsAnother pessimist/agnostic

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness inphilosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy:neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. -John W. Gardner

Philosophy, like medicine, has plenty of drugs, few good remedies, and hardly any specific cures.-NicolasChamfort

One of several self-critical quotesPhilosophy is the product of wonder. -Alfred North Whitehead

A true believer…

You can't do without philosophy, since everything has its hidden meaning which we must know.-Maxim Gorky

But if everything has a hidden meaning, how can we know anything! This is a self-conflictingstatement – paradoxes are often the subject of philosophy.

The true function of philosophy is to educate us in the principles of reasoning and not to put anend to further reasoning by the introduction of fixed conclusions. -George Henry Lewes

There’s a moral for MS physics here.

When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you stillsee the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's theconsolation of philosophy. -David Cronenberg

Realism gives a different – and correct – perspective.

You should carefully study the Art of Reasoning, as it is what most people are very deficient in,and I know few things more disagreeable than to argue, or even converse with a man who has noidea of inductive and deductive philosophy. -William John Wills

Exactly my thoughts when reading some free-wheeling forum discussion.

6. Science quotes2

The proper subject of this paper is philosophy applied to science. Many modern scientists haveassumed that philosophy is naught but a collection of memorable epigrams from non-scien-tists…scientific poetry, as it were. The various diverse schools of philosophy collectively knownas modernism admittedly make this assumption credible…but only if realism is not clearly de-fined and separated from the intellectual chaos that modernism represents.Here are the thoughts of some philosophers about science.

Science is simply common sense at its best that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and mercilessto fallacy in logic. -Thomas Henry Huxley

Unfortunately for Darwin’s bulldog, this aphorism is more observed by MS physics in thebreach than in its observation.

Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones isnot a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. -Jules Henri Poincaré

…thus undermining most of modern education

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.-Alfred North Whitehead

Philo-analysis of modern physics with realism will expose the painfully obvious.[Science is] a series of judgments, revised without ceasing. Yet the current science is pursued as ifinfallible – history notwithstanding. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Got to be one of my favorite quotes…the penalty for ignoring (scientific) history is to repeat itsmistakes.

In essence, science is a perpetual search for an intelligent and integrated comprehension of theworld we live in. -Cornelius Bernardus Van Neil

That is philosophy, not science, Connie.

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value judg-ments of all kinds remain necessary. -Albert Einstein

….exposing the weakness of science as a KD. A recognition of the proper but inferior role of sci-ence… from a surprising source.

As far as the propositions of mathematics refer to reality they are not certain, and so far as theyare certain, they do not refer to reality. -Albert Einstein

Have the modern disciples of Einstein read this?

The most incomprehensible thing about our universe is that it can be comprehended……A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot….. -Albert Einstein

Applies well to modern relativists.

Newton, forgive me. -Albert EinsteinA statement of respect, or an admission of guilt/error?

Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queererthan we can suppose. …… I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth that aredreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophymyself, and must be my excuse for dreaming. -John Burden Sanderson Haldane

Supports agnosticism…ironical that his ‘dreams’ have become today’s establishment beliefs andthe nightmares of realist philosophers.

Shall I refuse my dinner because I do not fully understand the process of digestion?-Oliver Heaviside

So Rome wasn’t built in a day. Why test if we know the result?

The mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with simi-lar energy. … a new idea is the most quickly acting antigen known to science. If we watch our-selves honestly we shall often find that we have begun to argue against a new idea even before ithas been completely stated. -Claude Bernard

…like realism, absolutism or geocentrism, Claude?

We see only what we know. -Percy Williams BridgmanThe antidote for resistance to change – paradigm shifting.

[Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposedto make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations. -Max Born

Faith means belief without seeing -the wrong choice of word here.

… the scientist would maintain that knowledge in of itself is wholly good, and that there shouldbe and are methods of dealing with misuses of knowledge by the ruffian or the bully other than bysuppressing the knowledge. -Percy Williams Bridgman

Is mainstream physics a ruffian/bully? Is peer review a means to access – or suppress - newknowledge?

7. Metaphysical Assumptions/Axioms

Metaphysical Assumptions or AxiomsThe set of self-evident premises or assumptions or axioms form the initial base for building aKD…. the metaphysics that precedes the physics. Self-evident premise here means a conceptthat can’t be proven inductively, but can’t be imagined to be wrong. like 2+2 = 4.

Self-referential contradictions were the subject of study by Bertrand Russell and logicians. Theyshould be removed from any metaphysics set of axioms. An example is:

Only one thing is certain--that is, nothing is certain.If this statement is true, it is also false, conflicting in truth value with itself.

Strangely enough, these one-line contradictions are common in science dialogues and essays.For example, here’s a statement that attempts to show there is no truth, a form of relativism of-ten used by atheists and nihilists.There is no absolute truth!Whether this be true or false, it is self-contradictory. Of course, if a philosophy accepts contra-dictions (contrary to realism) then self-referential ones will be accepted. Otherwise, we can logi-cally correctly say:There is at least one absolute truth.

Metaphysical RealismTo prevent the collapse of logic we insist that there be a metaphysics of realism. These shouldbe discussed until common ground is found. Here are a few tenets of realism:1. Principle of Non-contradiction: It is impossible that the same thing be and not be at the sametime and in the same respect.Corollary There is nothing between existence and non-existence, being and non-being.2. Causality: Every effect has at least one cause.Actions/events must be connected by cause and effect, which we derive from experience.Establishment physics would point out that we don’t know the causes of many effects/events,but that speaks to our current ignorance, not to the absence of causality.Corollaries to this axiom:

Action at some distance with no intermediate causes is totally repugnant.

Whatever changes is changed by another.

The cause is greater than the effect.

Without the cause there can be no effect.3. Ontological properties of being: All beings have both existence and essence.

Existence: that which is.

Essence : that within being that makes it what it is.4. Behavior follows nature/being. Actions come from the essence of being.Every being conforms to its own nature, so actions are clues to the nature or essence of being.5. Sense knowledge: There is nothing in the mind that did not enter through the senses.A rejection of idealism. The world as known via the senses is the source of knowledge.6. Source of knowledge: Everything in the mind has a foundation in reality.Note that the statement is not that all in the mind exists in reality.

7. Reliability of senses: The functional sense faculties are reliable, relative to their proper object.The eye cannot hear, the ear cannot taste.Functional means in normal order.8. Universals: The intellect handles universals ; the senses particulars.The mind deals with abstract symbols; the senses with concrete images/impressions.9. Knowing reality: What is knowable has existence.To be known to the mind, concepts must originate in reality and passed through the senses.10. Self-causality: Nothing causes itself.A corollary of the principle of sufficient reason: nothing can give what it does not already have.This rejects an uncaused origin of the Big Bang expansion.11. Reality and existence : Nothing can act if not in existence.A rejection of conventional quantum mechanics….12. Consistency of causes: In the same circumstances the same causes produce the same effects.There is no truly random process, contrary to quantum mechanics.13. Crux of the scientific method : Theory guides but experiment decides.

8. Much ado about nothing

We can put our realism philosophy to work, based on the metaphysics just proposed. Two con-cepts often bouncing around the physics world are nothing and infinity. Neither of these hasexistence…. Let’s use realistic principles to see why.

Nothing or nihil - the absence of anything; non-being - must be distinguished from physicalvacuum, space that is empty of matter. The vacuum of deep space must contain at least theCMB radiation, and probably a few sparse hydrogen atoms. And if EM radiation exists every-where, then so must its medium… aether. But that’s digressing.So the philosophical concept of nihil has no properties capable of description, so physics – underthe scientific method rule of testability, has no way to verify the existence or essence of ‘noth-ing’. As Aristotle said, ”from nothing comes nothing”. With no cause, there’s no effect… theprinciple of causality.Another slant on this concept is the need for knowledge to enter the mind via the senses - a real-ism principle. With nihil, there’s nothing – literally – to trigger the senses.In using the word nothing, then, we have no mental image of what we mean… except as a nega-tion of what we can perceive! If you think that’s obvious, then think again.A pop culture physicist named Lawrence Krauss ventured into philosophical turf with his newbook – A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence M.Krauss3

This limited philosophical view by a physicist would be the subject of formal analysis by atrained philosopher in Not Understanding Nothing- A review of A Universe from Nothing by Edward Feser4

The review is excellent and displays how a mainstream physicist struggles when the basic foun-dations of knowledge are missing.... or dismissed with hubris; portions of the review follow.

Krauss’ aim is to answer the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” without resortingto God—and also without bothering to study what previous thinkers of genius have said.…. Krauss doesn’t understand the question itself. There is a lot of farcical chin-pulling in the book overvarious “possible candidates for nothingness” and “what ‘nothing’ might actually comprise, along withan earnest insistence that any “definition” of nothingness must ultimately be “based on empirical evi-dence” and that ‘nothing’ is every bit as physical as ‘something’—as if “nothingness” were a highly unu-sual kind of stuff that is more difficult to observe or measure than other things are.

“Nothing” is not any kind of thing in the first place but merely the absence of anything. To ask why thereis something rather than nothing is just to ask why it isn’t the case that all of these statements [aboutwhat exists] are false. There is nothing terribly mysterious about the question, however controversial thetraditional answer.The bulk of the book is devoted to exploring how the energy present in otherwise empty space, togetherwith the laws of physics, might have given rise to the universe as it exists today. This is at first treated asif it were highly relevant to the question of how the universe might have come from nothing—untilKrauss acknowledges toward the end of the book that energy, space, and the laws of physics don’t reallycount as “nothing” after all. Then it is proposed that the laws of physics alone might do the trick—thoughthese too, as he implicitly allows, don’t really count as “nothing” either.His final proposal is that “there may be no fundamental theory at all” but just layer upon layer of laws ofphysics, which we can probe until we get bored. But this is no explanation of the universe at all. In partic-ular, it is nowhere close to what Krauss promised his reader—an explanation of how the universe arosefrom nothing—since an endless series of “layers” of laws of physics is hardly “nothing.” His book is like apamphlet titled ‘How to Make a Million Dollars in One Week’ that turns out to be a counterfeiter’s man-ual.Krauss is notable not only for sophomoric philosophical errors but also for sheer repetitiveness. Why dotrained physicists wander so far from coherence? One possibility …a picture holds these thinkers captive,a picture of the quantitative methods of modern science that have made possible breathtaking predictiveand technological successes.The thinker who claims to eschew philosophy in favor of science is constantly tempted “to make a meta-physics out of his method,” trying to define reality as what his preferred techniques can measure ratherthan letting reality dictate what techniques are appropriate for studying it. He is like the drunk whothinks his car keys must be under the lamppost because that is the only place there is light to look forthem—and who refuses to listen to those who have already found them elsewhere.Krauss approvingly cites physicist Frank Wilczek’s unflattering comparison of string theory to a riggedgame of darts: “First, one throws the dart against a blank wall, and then one goes to the wall and draws abull’s-eye around where the dart landed.” Yet that is exactly Krauss’ procedure. He defines “nothing”and other key concepts precisely so as to guarantee that only the physicist’s methods he is comfortablewith can be applied to the question of the universe’s origin—and that only a non-theological answer willbe forthcoming.Krauss’ voyage does not take his reader where he thought he was going. To the centuries-old debate overwhy any universe exists at all, Krauss’ book contributes—precisely nothing.

Typically, establishment physicists are out of their league in dealing with topics from other do-mains, especially philosophy. Reality that conflicts with their limited physics worldview mustbe interpreted to be in agreement, either forcefully or illogically.

7 More than enough – the infinite

Infinity is another word that is bandied about, but has no generally accepted interpretation inphysics. The mess all starts with the cavalier attitude towards the meaning of infinite, which leadsup to mainstream confusion over whether space and time are infinite or if time ever began? Inmost cases physicists don’t try to reason the meaning of infinite from first principles (metaphys-ics), but just assume the universe is either finite or infinite and use their assumption to supporttheir pet theory.

Infinite does have a well-defined meaning in philosophy, so it’s reasonable that the existentialquestion of real infinities in space or time has already been known to philosophers for two and ahalf millennia, since the age of Pericles. The simple answer is that there are no infinites in real-ity….

Infinity is: something without any limit, edge or end; unboundness.

Many scientists – who should know better – make the mistake of implying that an infinite numberis bigger than any other number. But infinity in mathematics is not number or quantity at all; infact, it’s the absence of definite quantity!

There’s agreement that infinities exist in mathematics. The set of natural numbers is infinite …andalso immaterial. (We shall see that being immaterial is a property of infinity.)The set of numbers is also unchangeable (no new number can be added). So being unchangea-ble/immovable/immutable is also a property of infinity.

Mental operations of the mind (not the brain!) use infinite objects…numbers …and symbols…andimages. So the mind is infinite in the sense of unlimited ideas or thoughts, but limited (by thephysical brain) to having only one idea in focus at a time.

But does realism offer evidence that time and space (the universe of things) is finite?

Consider time…. An interval of time is not infinite because it will be replaced by another timeinterval, which means its change indicates it has not reached its limit – so any interval of time isfinite. If time did reach a point where it did not change, then infinity would be a possibility… butwhen time stops, it disappears… it no longer exists!So time is not infinite… Welcome to Realism 101!

An argument can also be presented, that time had a beginning, using proof by contradictionv:1- There are only two possibilities : the hypothesis is true and its contradiction is false or

the hypothesis is false and its contradiction is true2- Assume the contradiction of the hypothesis is true3- Show that assumption leads to a contradiction4- If the contradiction is false, then the hypothesis must be true

Either time had a beginning (finite past) or did not have a beginning (infinite past). There are noother possibilities.Assume time did not have a beginning (infinite past). Then the current time now, t0, must bepreceded by an infinite set of time intervals. But then time t0 now can never be reached. But weclearly have reached the present time….Infinite past has no limit, so the span of time before any particular time can never be completed!Since infinite past is a false concept, past time must be finite – time had a beginning. The errorin logic is assuming that an infinite sequence of time intervals could ever, in reality, reach a par-ticular time.

Material objects are limited by their essence or nature. They can change in their accidental fea-tures, but not in their essential properties. No matter how many material objects we gather, thenumber always remains finite (countable). The question is if all the objects in the universe arecountable. The answer is no. Of importance, of course, is why.

What about an infinite universe, meaning a universe containing an infinite number of objects?The history of this issue goes back to Plato, who held that the infinity of the counting numbers –which are abstractions of quantities observed in reality - was also true for reality…an actual setof infinite objects /beings existed. Among the modern Platonists are included all those physi-cists who believe in an infinite universe ….erroneously.Can the universe of all objects be shown to be infinite like the number systems are?First we assume the set of all objects is infinite…without limit.

The set of all real objects is disordered, but can be put in order by labeling each object in the uni-verse with the next counting number, step by step, starting from zero, until every object is num-bered. This will not affect whether the set is finite or infinite, but allows the objects to be identi-fied.

If the universe’s set was finite, then we would always be able to count back to the start at zero.Since the premise is that the set is infinite, there must be at least one numbered object whichtakes more than a finite number of steps to count back to zero (Else the premise of an infinite setof objects would be false).But a number which is greater than any finite number is a contradiction – it’s not a number atall.The infinite universe premise is logically inconsistent; the universe of objects is finite.This conflict will occur whenever a correspondence is attempted between the unlimited mentalworld of math symbols and the real world of concrete existing objects. Ref:vi

In philo-realism the source of knowledge is the testimony of the senses. Yet neither infinity nornothing can be perceived by the senses; the two are in fact the absence of any sense impression,the lack of direct experience required not only by realism but by the scientific method. Withoutthe foundation of realism scientists will not be able to rationally resolve their confusion over thenature of infinity and nothing.

The infinite was defined by Aristotle as: whatever quantity is taken, there is always something more totake; that which can’t be traversed.The infinite in reality was distinguished from that in potency…that is, the potentially infinite, asis found in the mental abstraction of mathematics. According to Ari’s definition the natural num-bers have this potential; they can always be extended, but never completed. But the natural num-bers do not exist, as natural numbers, in reality.Ari denied an actual infinite could exist in the real world, because changes or motion could notoccur. One of his arguments involved using the geocentric model of his times to analyze the or-bital arc length of a celestial object an infinite distance from Earth. During its motion the objectmust travel an infinite arc distance, because the radii are both infinite; an impossibility, since aninfinite interval cannot be traversed.This argument is dependent on the geocentricity premise, a belief held by almost all the ancientGreeks. So the validity of the argument will be held in abeyance until the validity of the geocen-tric axiom is established in later analysis.

Aquinas refines motionAquinas later refined the concept of motion and change by examining the process of cause andeffect and finding motion to be a change from an actual state of being now to a new potential stateof being, where the set of potential states are the limits of the change.For example, a wheel (actual) can roll to a new location (potency) but cannot change into a tree(impotency). A change in finite beings then implies limits to its potential new states of being. Asan infinite being has no limits a change in a infinite being would be impossible, as it would be achoice between limits which it does not have.A very powerful conclusion, then: Finite beings change; infinite beings are immutable.Applied to observations of the universe of reality, we see all things are subject to change.Therefore, reality is finite.The key is comprehending that being infinite implies being immutable. (This does not preclude,however, what is not physically observable being immutable…and infinite). Ref:vii

Space, mass and time – the trinity of measurement – are all finite, in the school of realism.Whatever is infinite has no need to – or possibility of – changing from one state to another secondstate, because changing means a limit is being approached but not yet achieved. Whatever isinfinite has no limits, by definition.This simple beginning of realist thinking, if accepted, can provide common metaphysical groundfor research and debate, and sharpen what is often sloppy physical reasoning.The fault with modern physicists basically lies in a belief in their knowledge domain that is se-verely handicapped in its scope of truth sources (epistemology) and their closed minds to moregeneral systems for discovering truth. See how the great leaders of physics stumble and fall overissues like non-existence and infinity while the philosophers of realism dispose of them with re-sort only to common experience, clear definition of beliefs (metaphysics) and clear rationalthought (logic).

8. Scientism revealed

The antithesis of realism, philosophically, is probably a form of modernism called scientism. Phi-losopher Feser does more excellent work in applying philosophical rules to this modern blighton scientific thinking.Some of his two-part seriesviii is presented below:[] contains my comments.Scientism is the view that ALL real knowledge is scientific knowledge—that there is no rational, objectiveform of inquiry that is not a branch of science. Indeed, the culture at large seems beholden to an inchoatescientism—“faith” is often pitted against “science” (even by those friendly to the former) as if “science”were synonymous with “reason.”Scientific inquiry itself rests on a number of philosophical assumptions [collectively termed Realism]:

that there is an objective world external to the minds of scientists;

that this world is governed by causal regularities;

that the senses are capable of faithfully representing the world to the mind

that the human intellect can uncover and accurately describe these regularitiesSince [pre-modern?] science presupposes these things, it cannot attempt to justify them without arguingin a circle. And if it cannot even establish that it is a reliable form of inquiry, it can hardly establish thatit is the only reliable form. Both tasks would require “getting outside” science altogether and discoveringfrom that extra-scientific vantage point that science conveys an accurate picture of reality—and in thecase of scientism, that only science does so.There is also the question of how to interpret what science tells us about the world. For example, is theworld fundamentally comprised of substances or events? What is it to be a “cause”? Is there only onekind? (Aristotle held that there are at least four.) What is the nature of the universals referred to in scien-tific laws—concepts like quark, electron, atom, and so on—and indeed in language in general? Do theyreally exist over and above the particular things that instantiate them? Scientific findings can shed lighton such metaphysical questions, but can never fully answer them. Yet if science must depend upon phi-losophy both to justify its presuppositions and to interpret its results, the falsity of scientism seems dou-bly assured.Its advocate may now insist: ….all rational inquiry is scientific inquiry. The trouble now is that scien-tism becomes completely trivial, arbitrarily redefining “science” so that it includes anything that could beput forward as evidence against it. Worse, it makes scientism consistent with views that are supposed tobe incompatible with it. . . For the whole point of scientism…was supposed to be to provide a weapon bywhich fields of inquiry like theology might be dismissed as inherently unscientific and irrational..... the “objectivism” inherent in scientism.... could be realized only by focusing on those aspects of thenatural world susceptible of strict prediction and control, and this in turn required a quantitative meth-odology, so that mathematics would come to be regarded as the language in which the “book of nature”

was written. And yet our ordinary, everyday experience of the world is qualitative through andthrough—we perceive colors, sounds, warmth and coolness, purposes and meanings..... the commonsense, qualitative “manifest image” came to be regarded as a world of mere “appearance,”with the new quantitative “scientific image” alone conveying “reality.” The former would be re-definedas “subjective” – color, sound, heat, cold, meaning, purpose, and the like, as common sense understandsthem, exist in the mind alone[idealism]. ....., if color, temperature, sound and the like are to be regarded asexisting in objective reality, they must be redefined – heat and cold reconceived in terms of molecular mo-tion, color in terms of the reflecting of photons at certain wavelengths, sound in terms of compressionwaves, and so forth. ..... The new method thus ensured that the natural world as studied by science wouldbe quantifiable, predictable, and controllable – precisely by redefining “science” so that nothing that didnot fit the method would be allowed to count as “physical,” “material,” or “natural.” ..... the mind ...can-not even in theory be assimilated via quantitative modeling to the material world, as that world has beencharacterized by physical science. The very nature of scientific understanding, at least as the modernshave defined it, thus entails a “practical dualism” of mind and matter....Human thought and action, including the thoughts and actions of scientists, are of their nature irreduci-ble to the meaningless, purposeless motions of particles and the like. Some thinkers committed to scien-tism realize this, but conclude that the lesson to draw is not that scientism is mistaken, but that humanthought and action are themselves fictions.[again, idealism] .... What is true of human beings is only what can be put in the technical jargon of phys-ics, chemistry, neuroscience and the like.So scientism consistently pursued leads to the ... position that the human mind itself is a fiction—thatthere are no such things as thinking, perceiving, willing, desiring, and so forth. This position is not onlyincoherent, but undermines the very possibility of science itself—the very thing scientism claims to cham-pion.Why would anyone be attracted to such a bizarre and muddleheaded view? Hypnotized by the unparal-leled predictive and technological successes of modern science, contemporary intellectuals infer that scien-tism must be true, so that anything that follows from it—however fantastic or seemingly incoherent—must be true as well. But this is sheer sophistry. If a certain method of studying nature affords us a highdegree of predictive and technological power, all that shows is that the method is useful for dealing withthose aspects of nature that are predictable and controllable. It does not show us that those aspects ex-haust nature, that there is nothing more to the natural world than what the method reveals. Neither doesit show that there are no rational means of investigating reality other than those involving empirical pre-diction and control. To assume otherwise is fallaciously to let one’s method dictate what counts as realityrather than letting reality determine what methods are appropriate for studying it.[Plato’s troglodytes only knew a world of cave shadows; they knew nothing of the 3-D world of color out-side the cave. Mainstream scientists in the throes of scientism are like the cave-dwellers – ignorant, ofcourse, of what they don’t know. Unlike the Plato model, the scientists of today have access to a full epis-temology of truth, but choose to ignore it for ideological reasons.]A passage from Bertrand Russell brings the point further….:It is not always realized how exceedingly abstract is the information that theoretical physics has to give. Itlays down certain fundamental equations which enable it to deal with the logical structure of events,while leaving it completely unknown what is the intrinsic character of the events that have the structure.We only know the intrinsic character of events when they happen to us. Nothing whatever in theoreticalphysics enables us to say anything about the intrinsic character of events elsewhere. They may be just likethe events that happen to us, or they may be totally different in strictly unimaginable ways. All thatphysics gives us is certain equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what it is thatchanges, and what it changes from and to—as to this, physics is silent.

...The knowledge physics gives us is so exceedingly abstract….that it leaves it completely unknown whatthe inner nature of those objects, apart from their mathematically definable properties, really is. And yetthe physical world is not a mere abstraction..... If we are to know what that inner nature is, and to knowof anything else about which empirical science is silent, we must go beyond science—to philosophy, the

true “paradigm of rationality,” But ...don’t philosophers notoriously disagree among themselves? Even ifit is conceded that there is more to the world than science tells us, mightn’t we nevertheless be justified in... concluding that ... scientism is a reasonable attitude to take in practice, even if problematic in theory?The trouble is that this is itself a philosophical claim, subject to philosophical criticism and requiring phil-osophical argumentation in its defense. The very attempt to avoid philosophy implicates one in practicingit. !!Even the attempt to escape metaphysics is no sooner put in the form of a proposition than it is seen to in-volve highly significant metaphysical postulates.If you cannot avoid metaphysics, what kind of metaphysics are you likely to create while attempting todeny it or ignore it? It will be passed on to others ....by insinuation rather than by direct argument…[This is the rhetoric of mainstream physics.]The thinker who decries metaphysics must still have a method to communicate, and he will be under astrong and constant temptation to make a metaphysics out of his method; that is, to suppose the universeultimately of such a sort that his method must be appropriate and successful.[The structure of the universal laws is prejudged and predefined to satisfy the theory pro-posed.]We have no choice but to engage in philosophy. The only question is whether we will do it well or badly.Those committed to scientism pretend not to do it at all, but what they have really done is made a meta-physics out of their method, a very bad metaphysics indeed. Only those who do not eschew philoso-phy.....are going to do it well....Denying the reality of these things seems to lead to nihilism and even incoherence. Beholden as intellectu-als in general are to the scientistic spirit of the age, too few think to question the assumptions that led tothe impasse in the first place.[A consensus of scientific metaphysics is non-existent].Disagreement that plagues contemporary philosophy is largely a consequence of scientism, or at least of amethodological bias that scientism has raised to the level of an ideology.What happens when we do reject this bias....is a return to the philosophical wisdom of the ancients andmedievals… their metaphysics has never been surpassed. There is a common core to the tradition theyfounded....that sets them apart from the decadent philosophical systems of the moderns.This core constitutes a “perennial philosophy” apart from which the harmony of common sense and sci-ence, and indeed even the coherence of science itself, cannot be understood. Only those who know some-thing about philosophy and its history, and who have grappled seriously with its questions, have earnedthe right to pronounce on the rational credentials of science….that most definitely does not include thoseblinded by scientism.

Among the questions materialism/scientism can’t answer are:Why there is something - not nothing?How does materialism explain the mind-brain interface?… the mind’s independence of space and time?…the phenomenon of consciousness?… the material difference between a living body and a corpse?

9 Conclusion

The primary basis for common ground in science is not the scientific method nor language, but aconsensus on a philosophical worldview.

Can a building be constructed without a foundation? Even if the workers speak the same lan-guage….. what if the builders don’t agree on what tools to use, or how to use them?What if there are no building codes for guidance, or workers just ignore the codes?What if there are no inspectors to enforce the codes?

Just as this hypothetical structure is doomed to collapse, any scientific Knowledge Domain – likephysics - is doomed to fail without a common ground of tools and rules as a foundation to buildupon.

The commonality for building natural knowledge domains that’s missing is a realistic worldview- philosophical realism. The world of mainstream modern physics either ignores or denies therole of philosophy, metaphysics and logic in building a physics KD. Like the unskilled and clue-less construction workers, the edifice of knowledge they build will be as a house of cards…..de-stroyed by a mere zephyr of the truth.

Realism has long been on the scene. Founded by Aristotle and refined by Middle Age scholas-tics, realism was then replaced by brands of modernism – materialism, scientism, humanism, nat-uralism, idealism, agnosticism and even nihilism. Evidence of realism’s rejection is found inCopericanism, Darwinism, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Big Bang Cosmology.

Realism is offered here as this key basis for communication. Its metaphysical premises are sum-marized below, albeit incompletely.

Metaphysics of Realism

1. An objective world exists - external to and independent of - the minds of scientists.2. The senses are capable of faithfully representing the world to the mind.3. The human intellect can discover and adequately describe these regularities.4. Non-contradiction: It is impossible that the same thing be and not be at the same time and

in the same respect.5. Causality: Every effect has at least one cause.6. Sufficient Reason: Nothing can give what it doesn’t already have.7. All beings have both existence and essence.8. Behavior arises from the nature of being.9. Knowledge source: There is nothing in the mind that did not enter through the senses.10. Reliability of knowledge: Everything in the mind has a foundation in reality.11. Reliability of the senses: The functional sense faculties are reliable when presented with

their proper object.12. Universals: The intellect uses symbolic universals; the senses use concrete particulars.13. Self-causality: Nothing can cause itself.14. Reality and existence: Nothing can act if not in existence.15. Consistency of causes: In the same circumstances the same causes produce the same effects.16. Link to the scientific method: Theory guides but experiment decides.

Realism applied to modern science

Quantum Mechanics: Some versions – like the Copenhagen theory - hold that reality/eventsare caused by human observation. This is denied by realism axiom 6: Sufficient reason for acause.

Cosmology: Big Bang theory entertains the notion that the universe came to existence fromnothing. A violation of axiom 5, a lack of causality.

Darwinism: Evolution proposes that beings can change into higher orders of being by interact-ing with their environment. But the evolved properties are not present in the environment…. Aviolation of axiom 6: Not sufficient reason for a cause.

Relativity: - a topic of such complexity and confusion as to require coverage in a separate analy-sis.

Consider using these tools in your own scientific research.Or else join with modern scientists drifting in a sea of intellectual ignorance, bereft of guidingstars or navigating tools.

References

1 http://www.famousquotesandauthors.com/topics/philosophy_quotes.htmlhttp://thinkexist.com/quotations/philosophy/2 http://www.quotegarden.com/science.html

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_science.html

http://www.quotationspage.com/subjects/science/3 http://www.amazon.com/Universe-Nothing-There-Something-Ra-

ther/dp/145162445X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341496315&sr=8-1&keywords=krauss+nothing4 http://subversivethinking.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-by-philosopher-edward-feser-of.htmlv Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of FaithBy Peter Kreeft, Ronald Keith Tacelli, Ronald Tacelli, P 63

vi http://www.jamesrmeyer.com/infinite/infinity-1.htmlLogic and Language - James Meyervii Infinity : A Select History of the Infinite through Avicenna, Jon McGinnishttp://www.umsl.edu/~philo/People/Faculty/McGinnis%20Works/Avicennan%20infin-ity.pdfviii Blinded by Scientism Edward Feserhttp://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1174

Recovering Sight after Scientism Edward Feser

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/03/1184